The Cruel Sea (1951) (68 page)

She reached out both arms in greeting, uncovering for him her bared breast; and as he slipped within her embrace, and they continued to stare at each other, her look as for a beloved child changed into a look of a different sort – welcoming, acquiescent, humble and assertive within the same fervent pattern.

He took her in an intent trembling silence which neither wished to break.

After that they did not sleep: it was as if their second lovemaking, unravelling the sweet, strange fact of the first, released them now to enjoy all the rest of what they could give each other. They talked, unhurriedly, till morning, while the grey light, filling the glen again, seeped gently into their room: of all the countless dawns of the war, thought Lockhart, this was the first tranquil one, the first one where nothing could harm him, the first one with the lovely label ‘Julie’ . . . They talked of many things: of loving and being loved, of what attracted them in each other, of their nervousness the previous evening: the process of bringing themselves and each other up to date within their small corner of history was easeful and exciting by turns, and deeply healing to all past fears and ordeals. I have won her, thought Lockhart, looking beyond Julie to the window-square of light that announced the day: I must keep her also – it is not just those eyes, and the body that is cool and hot at the same time, pure and shameless, her own and then mine, by quick turns, as I wish it and as she wishes it: this is the
person
for me – she makes sense of it all . . . He turned on his elbow, looking down lovingly at her, and she met his glance with clear pleasure, and said: ‘You are pale . . . What are we going to do today?’

‘Well – this,’ said Lockhart, with little hesitation.

‘It has my vote also.’ She eyed the ceiling speculatively. ‘But wasn’t there some talk, a long time ago, of your being a Puritan?’

‘That I am,’ he answered determinedly. ‘Who are you to doubt it?’

‘I am a girl to whom a lot of nice things have been happening, almost continuously . . . What is your brand of Puritanism, and why do you tell me all these terrible lies?’

‘They aren’t lies,’ he said, with seriousness. ‘I’m not a sensual person at all, really. You make me so, but then you are you . . . There’s been nothing like this in the war for me – nor ever, for that matter. It’s a complete change, a complete break.’

‘A break with what?’

‘With reality, I suppose.’

‘Look,’ she said decisively, ‘I do not like to be in that category.’

‘I mean,’ he said, floundering a little, ‘that there’s the war – you’ve come as a lovely surprise in the middle of it – I wish to God you could alter it for ever – but it’s still there—’

‘And you’ll just go back to it afterwards?’

‘I can’t go back the same, but I have to go back. We both have. Julie,’ he said, seeing in the half-light the hint of a smile on her face, ‘you don’t have to try to put me in the wrong. I do it quite well myself . . .’

‘My Puritan,’ she murmured, ‘how can I make you love me?’

‘There are three ways,’ he said with energy, steering away from the doubtful ground. ‘You must look as you do now, you must feel as you did a couple of hours ago, you must talk as you do always. Even separately, they are irresistible. Together—’ He stopped.

‘Was it really two hours ago?’ she asked innocently.

‘Yes.’

‘Puritanism indeed . . .’

‘I refuse to be put in the wrong over
that
. . .’ Attracted by a new and delicate sound, he turned towards the window. ‘Do you know,’ he asked after a pause, ‘that it is snowing?’

She raised herself to look out of the window, showing her breast and shoulders a warm glowing white against the coarse sheets. ‘How lovely!’ she exclaimed. ‘Now no one can reach us for days . . .’

‘For ever,’ he said. ‘Snow on – we have eggs, we have many things in tins, we have a large ham from Canada . . .’ The isolation which had threatened to be an embarrassment on the previous night, now seemed the prime blessing of their lives. ‘Snow on, snow us up completely. Leave us here in peace.’

‘And your war?’

‘The
war,’ he corrected, ‘need never reach Loch Fyne, and we need never see it again . . . My darling,’ he said, lying back once more, ‘it is now seven o’clock, it is snowing hard. You said: “What shall we do today?” and I said – what did I say?’

She leant over him, confidingly close again, swiftly warm and alive, as if what she had heard in his voice were linked to something deep within her. ‘I seem to remember,’ she murmured, ‘that you said: “This”.’

‘What is “this”?’

‘This.’

She had beckoned him sensually, that first night, and she never ceased to do so, whether it was by a smile or a look or a movement, whether by a motionless ecstasy or some candid intonation of her voice – as when she said, stroking the smooth skin of his chest: ‘You must light lots of fires again – I can’t tell you how few clothes I’m going to wear, during the next nine days . . .’ For it had a deep, an astonishing strength for her, too. Occasionally she would surprise him by her wildness in lovemaking, the tender and tormented clenching of her body. ‘My storm,’ he would whisper at the end – and as if that were a signal, he would feel the engulfing wave of her passion begin to break under him, and as if
that
were a signal, his own would break with hers, surging together upon the shore of their delight.

During all those days and nights, the dreamlike haze in which they moved seemed to grow deeper, transfixing, submerging them both. Her eyes, her voice, her cordial body all ravished him; and she also, guiding and submitting at the same time, seemed able to make of his body a weapon for an extreme private rapture.

They often became, for each other, special people not alive before.

When, back on the Clyde, they had to part – Julie to her austere office, Lockhart to sea again – he wrote her in farewell a letter of love and deep gratitude, marked here and there by a tender reminiscent carnality – the sort of thoughts he was bound to have, after so moving an interlude. It ended:

I don’t think there is anything more to write except that you have become incalculably dear to me, and that the things it is grounded in are the things I want above all others. They are NOT all centred round that region of your body, for which I am sure there is some startling piece of Wren’s slang; but it’s idle to deny that they include it, as closely and as happily as it, last night, included me. I now adore you.

1944: Winning

Buckingham Palace was not looking its best on that wet January morning: the bare trees dripped without ceasing, the Royal Standard clung forlornly to its pole, and the fallen masonry and boarded-up windows in the forecourt showed that His Majesty shared with his subjects not only their exposure to the hazards of war, but also their inability to get the after-effects repaired in anything under two years. On Grace Ericson and her mother, however, none of this could have the smallest effect: the day for them was indestructibly bright. They were both decked in every kind of finery: they were there by invitation of the Lord Chamberlain himself; and they were to see their nearest and dearest not only shaking hands with the King, but possibly even talking to him as well. For this Investiture was a personal occasion, arranged (it seemed) almost specifically on their behalf: to it, Commander George Eastwood Ericson, d.s.o., d.s.c., r.n.r., had been bidden, in order to receive the first-named decoration from the King’s own hand.

It was very crowded: the anteroom was thronged with people, and the queues making for the main Audience Chamber recalled a successful film show. ‘I thought you said there was only two relatives allowed,’ grumbled Grace’s mother, hemmed in by the slowly-moving mass. She looked round her belligerently, standing on her rights as a hero’s mother-in-law. ‘It’s my belief there’s been some shinnanakin’.’

‘Hush, mother,’ said Grace, not for the first or the last time. ‘You must behave yourself, really – think of what George would say!’

The old lady snorted. ‘George wouldn’t like us to be pushed and pulled about like this, that I do know – are you sure you’ve got the tickets?’

Grace did not reply: for her, though she was as gratified to be there as her mother, this was a different sort of occasion altogether. It was not just a show, not something you queued up for and complained about: it was a triumphant moment and a devout one – and she wasn’t going to share that feeling with anyone and she wasn’t going to have it spoilt either. She was immensely proud of what her husband had done, the more so because she knew what it had cost him: he
deserved
his medals, he
deserved
to have the King pin them on himself – and the meeting between him and the King was the sign she had long hoped for, a solemn ceremony to mark their compact, and to acknowledge the fact that George was working himself nearly to death, and was often in terrible danger, and never thought twice about it because the King was party to the bargain . . . She hoped that, behind the scenes, they were already making a real fuss of him. This was his second medal, after all.

At that moment, as it happened, a very gentlemanly fellow in black breeches was saying briskly to Ericson and the others: ‘D.S.Os and above, fall in, in two lines on the left.’

The ceremony got under way with precise formality. The audience settled itself, the King appeared on the dais, the vanguard of those who were to be honoured appeared in the doorway, while others pressed behind them. They were a mixed contingent, here and there contrasted in a somewhat moving way: among the leaders, a young airman with a cherubic face received the Victoria Cross, an old grizzled Admiral got some superior sort of knighthood, a soldier with scarred face and dark glasses groped his way forward to receive the George Medal. They came in procession, four deep, rank upon rank of accomplishment and valour and distinction; there were nervous young servicemen whose bravery had clearly petered out far short of this personal appearance, elderly colonels with the ribbons of many other wars upon their breasts, prosperous old Knights recalling Falstaff at his most expansive . . . What a lot of different people, thought Grace Ericson – and why were so many of them in front of George?

‘Where is he?’ the old lady grumbled by her side. ‘They’re keeping him back, you mark my words.’

‘Hush, mother, do,’ said Grace. ‘He’ll be here in a minute.’

As she spoke, Ericson appeared round the edge of the doorway, moving forward between an RAF squadron leader and a red-haired, red-faced leading-stoker who was blinking and sweating as if he had just run a hundred yards under bright hot lights. George looked tired and old, thought Grace, staring at him avidly; she felt prouder still now that she saw him standing in the King’s presence, and the D.S.O. and the D.S.C. showed that other people were proud of him too; but the price of her pride was etched all too plainly in his lined face and greying, thinning hair, and she felt like crying as she marked them. For the trouble was that, caught in this endless war, he might go on and on, getting older and older, more and more tired, until – until . . . Even now, there was no final figure set to this price he was paying: the total, the moment of quittance, seemed to recede whenever it was sighted, mocking them both every time the calendar came round again. The hard years of the war still followed one upon the other, with no respite in view: George was getting on for forty-nine, and he looked sixty – and now it was the start of yet another year – twelve more months to test and drain him. Perhaps this year would be the last one, perhaps not: they said that D-day was coming soon, but they’d been saying that for a long time, and nothing happened except the same war, the same bitter struggle which was using up people like her husband, making them old men a score of years before their time . . . She turned away, blinking, and whispered to her mother: ‘Isn’t he getting old?’

The old lady reacted with strange fierceness. ‘I’m sure he’s got a right to! Think of all his worries, and so much to do all the time. And then his brother being killed like that, and the Palace being bombed, on top of it all.’

After a moment, Grace whispered: ‘I mean George, mother.’

‘Don’t talk about the King like that,’ returned her mother, more tartly still. ‘You ought to be ashamed!’

Grace dropped the subject. Other people besides her husband were getting old. And the moment was at hand when neither of them should speak a word.

They both held their breath as Ericson was honoured.

The ship worked for some months of the new year, the fifth in the dreary succession of the war; and then, for
Saltash
and her crew, there came a strange and sudden holiday. They were at St John’s, Newfoundland, waiting between convoys, when the news reached them; the brief signal told them that they were to have a refit, with the long leave that went with it. But they were not to return home for the occasion; they were to dock on the opposite side of the Atlantic, in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the heart of lower New York, and there enjoy a two month rest.

‘New York!’ said Lockhart, when Ericson showed him the signal. ‘What’s wrong with the Clyde?’

‘Too crowded, probably,’ answered Ericson. Then he smiled. ‘You can’t have all the luck all the time, you know.’